Gunn: Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s Paypal. What are the most important things you learned?

Thompson: Yeah. You know, I think and I, I mention this to young kids when I’m on campus, and my son who I was just talking about at Santa Clara, what I’m happiest about in my background is if you work in technology you’re trained to solve problems.And that’s really it, you’re trained to pull apart very complex things and think about okay, how can I do this or how can I do that or how can I make it better?And that’s really the background that I have and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part thing of being an engineer is you think that way.

Recommended For You

The Board Room

Editors' Picks

I worked with a few nerds who called themselves Engineers and had Degrees in Art History. Proves nothing....infact it solidly proves he was hinting at his experience as an Engineer....degree not needed to be an Engineer.

I took some history classes in college. If someone ever said to me under any circumstances, "you majored in history and english, what'd you learn." I would immediately and without thinking say, "Oh, I was an English major. I took a lot of history classes."